


The Fire Eater

by Missy



Category: Gypsies Tramps and Thieves - Cher (Song)
Genre: Carnival, Character Study, Circus, Fire breathing, Fire eating, Gen, Growing Up, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Jukebox Fanworks Exchange, Jukebox Treat, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-13 04:59:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14742440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: The narrator tries to avoid her mother and grandmother's disasters, but can she outrun her own fate?





	The Fire Eater

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sweetcarolanne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetcarolanne/gifts).



When I was twelve I learned how to eat fire, flames first.

That was my mama’s idea. She said I ought to be protected at every turn. “There’s nothing scarier than a girl who can swallow down a burning stick and smile afterwards.” And I understood why she felt that way. After what had happened to her and happened to my grandmother, she’d cut out her own heart to protect me.

I got used to the greasy feeling of cooking oil in my mouth. To the sizzle of fire flashing out past my hand. It was the first thing I could control. 

I came to love it.

*** 

When I was fifteen I thought about settling down. My father came back for me. How he found out I existed I don’t know – but he found me. He wanted me to live with him.

I didn’t want to know him. I knew enough about him through my mother, knew what he had done to her. By then, my mama had married a navy man, and for the first time I learned what stability was – and I hated it. Young love, flirting boys, even the hope that I’d become a fortune teller and replace my grandfather in the troupe – I denied it all.

My mind had run off with the circus. The rest of my body was ready to follow.

***

I was twenty when I moved to Las Vegas. There was a place for me in the acrobatic troop at Cesar’s Palace, and I had enough experience to command a good salary. 

I begged mama to come with me; she was the last member of our family working at the carnival, which she’d rejoined after her navy man husband had died. Now she was barking for dimes on the midway. Her dancing days were long past her and I wanted to make sure he’d have somewhere safe to retire. 

But she turned me down. “I belong to the carnival,” she said. “Besides, what else would I go?”

With me, I wanted to say. But she wouldn’t go. So I left her in the wagon train, with a phone number to the elegant suite where I was staying taped to her pillow.

So I packed up my fire stick and my cooking oil. I made myself a new dancing costume, of fire-colored bugle beads. I stuck my thumb out, and I kissed my family goodbye. We would probably see each other again. Fate could be funny that way.

Whatever the world held for me, I was ready to face it.


End file.
